Should Corporations Be Able to Speak Freely? Corporate Speech in the Wake of Citizens United

Golden Gate Objectivists are invited to the following Campus Club event in Stanford, courtesy of the Ayn Rand Institute and the Campus Club:


Should Corporations Be Able to Speak Freely? Corporate Speech in the Wake of Citizens United

A debate at Stanford University

Who: Dr. Eric Daniels, research assistant professor at Clemson University’s Institute for the Study of Capitalism, and David Yosifon, law professor at Santa Clara University

What: A debate that focuses on the issue of whether corporations should have a limit on their right to free speech

Where: Building 420, Room 041, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94305

When: Tuesday, May 11, 2010, at 7:30 p.m.

Admission: FREE. Open to students and the public. No RSVP required.

Bio: Dr. Eric Daniels is a research assistant professor at Clemson University’s Institute for the Study of Capitalism. He has lectured internationally on American history, particularly on American intellectual history, business history and political history. He taught for five years in Duke University’s Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace, where he was nominated for a university-wide teaching award. Dr. Daniels was a contributor to the recently published Oxford Companion to United States History, and wrote a chapter in The Abolition of Antitrust. He has appeared on C-SPAN and Voice of America Radio.

David Yosifon teaches courses in the areas of business law, legal ethics and legal theory at Santa Clara University. His scholarship is focused on the application of social psychology, and allied social sciences, to law and legal theory. His recent work advances this approach to legal theory through a critique of the role that conventional conceptions of human agency play in contemporary corporate governance law.

Professor Yosifon was born and raised in New Jersey. He received his undergraduate degree in history and philosophy from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in 1995 (summa cum laude). After Rutgers he attended graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where in 1997 he received a master’s degree in American Social History. He received his J.D. from Harvard University in 2002 (magna cum laude). Before joining the faculty at Santa Clara University, Yosifon served as a visiting assistant professor at Rutgers Law School-Camden, and as a visiting associate professor at New York Law School. He served as a law clerk to the Honorable Patti B. Saris of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, and as a litigation associate at the Boston firm of Ropes & Gray, LLP.

More information: Please e-mail the host, the Objectivists of Stanford, atdakinsloss@gmail.com

Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI. ARI does not necessarily endorse the content of the lectures and sessions offered.

GGO at San Francisco Tea Party - Join Us!

Golden Gate Objectivists will participate at the Bay Area Patriot Tea Party on Thursday, April 15th, in San Francisco.

Here are the key details - we hope you will join us!

Where & when: 
San Francisco, Union Square, 4 pm - 7 pm
GGO will meet near the KSFO tent, between 3:45 pm - 4:15 pm. If you are planning to come, but will be late, look for our posters - or you can e-mail us ahead of time at goldengateobjectivists[at]gmail[dot]com, and I can give you more detail on how to find us at the event.

What:
Bay Area Patriots are organizing the event, and have several speakers and some musical entertainment scheduled. GGO will participate with posters focused on Individual Rights and their application to current issues, esp. health care. We will also have some copies of Ayn Rand Samplers, and some other hand-outs for those who are interested in learning more about our group, and about Objectivism.
We will bring a half-dozen posters - if you are coming, and want to carry one, but haven't RSVP'ed, you may need to bring your own.

You can find more event info here: www.bayareapatriots.com

Invitation to the Ayn Rand Society meeting in San Francisco, April 3

On April 3rd the Ayn Rand Society will be hosting an event open to the public at the Westin-St Francis in San Francisco. Here is the information forwarded by ARI. 

The Ayn Rand Society will meet once again with the American Philosophical Association (APA) Pacific Division, this year in San Francisco, at the Westin-St. Francis Hotel, Saturday evening, April 3rd. The meeting will be open to individuals who are neither members of the APA nor members of ARS. (The registration fee for individual events, payable at the APA Registration Desk, is $10. There is no other cost.)

The format of this ARS meeting is "Author-meet-Critics". This is a rubric used by the APA programmers for events at which a number of philosophers comment on a recent book and the author responds. ("Critic" is used in the way that it is in "movie critic": a critic’s review can certainly be favorable.)

Our meeting, however, will be Authors-meet-Critics, since the book in question is Essays on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (ed. R. Mayhew), and several of its essays will be discussed. In particular, three philosophers will comment on five of the philosophical essays in the volume by three authors, and the three authors will give responses, followed by Q & A.

The five papers under discussion, and their three authors, are:
1. Gregory Salmieri, "Atlas Shrugged on the Role of the Mind in Man's Existence"
2. Onkar Ghate, "The Role of Galt's Speech in Atlas Shrugged"
3. Allan Gotthelf, "Galt's Speech in Five Sentences (and Forty Questions)"
4. Allan Gotthelf, "A Note on Dagny's 'Final Choice'"
5. Gregory Salmieri, "Discovering Atlantis: Atlas Shrugged's Demonstration of a New Moral Philosophy”
The "critics" (or commentators) are:
Prof. Christine Swanton (University of Auckland, NZ), discussing paper #1.
Dr. William Glod (Institute for Humane Studies), discussing papers #2 and #3.
Prof. Lester Hunt (University of Wisconsin–Madison), discussing paper #4 and the portion of paper #5 devoted to Dagny.
The program will be chaired by Prof. Fred Miller, Bowling Green State University, and the book will be introduced by its editor, Robert Mayhew.

Further information is available on the Society's website, www.aynrandsociety.org (which is well worth consulting on its own). ARS members and contributors receive advance copies of the three papers, and will be sent copies of the responses (and Prof. Mayhew’s introduction) after to the meeting. If you would like to become a contributor to the Society, go to the “Membership (and other Affiliation)" page its website. But, as I say, individuals not affiliated with the Society are welcome at the San Francisco meeting. 

Report from BAP Event March 7

The Golden Gate Objectivists had a good showing at the Bay Area Patriot event in Marin on March 7th. About 30 groups had tables - we were featured right next to the speaker podium, where we were very visible to the about 500 people who attended the event. We handed out over 150 Ayn Rand Samplers, all 100 of our 'Man's Right' and 'America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business' pamphlets, as well as a big stack of essays advocating free-market health care reform. We also had over 20 people sign up to join our GGO mailing list: welcome to all of you, and we hope to see you again at one of our next events.

While most of the candidate speakers at the event were mixed or rather bad, we did connect with at least one potentially interesting candidate: John Dennis, who is running in the Republican Primary as a potential challenger for Nancy Pelosi, spoke quite emphatically on the importance of defending individual rights. In conversations after his talk, a few Golden Gate Objectivists found him to be surprisingly principled: he advocates phasing out entitlements, a free-market direction for health care reform, and an ultimate abolishment of the Fed. He also is well-read in Ayn Rand - admiring her not just for her politics of capitalism, but stating that he found her impressive for 'her fundamental identification that in the end, politics comes down to a person's views in epistemology and metaphysics.' Definitely a politician worth investigating: if someone with these views can have a good run against Nancy Pelosi, maybe we can have some real change soon!

Thank you also to Sally Zelikovski, who put this very professionally organized event together!

GGO at Tea Party/Conservative Group get-together March 7

GGO will have a table at the upcoming get-together organized by the Bay Area Patriots organization. The event will take place March 7th from 1 pm - 5 pm at the Mill Valley Community Center. We will have a table advertising our group as well as Ayn Rand, and will distribute free Ayn Rand Samplers and other pamphlets to event participants.

If you are interested in staffing the table, and haven't let us know yet, please send us an e-mail at goldengateobjectivists(at)gmail(dot)com.

Yaron Brook at Stanford - February 2nd, 7:30 pm

Below is an invitation from the Ayn Rand Institute to a debate including Yaron Brook at Stanford University. This debate is organized by the Objectivists at Stanford. Should be a great event to attend - we hope many of the Golden Gate Objectivists can make it. You don't have to RSVP - but if you are interested in car pooling or having an early dinner together prior to the event, please e-mail us at goldengateobjectivistsgmailcom.

[For car pooling, please let us know from where, and whether you want a ride or are offering (how many?)We will forward your e-mail to others in your area who have expressed an interest in car pooling, so you can coordinate with each other directly.]
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Dear ARI Contributor:

We wanted to alert you to the following live debate in your area.

Is Christianity Compatible with Capitalism?

A debate at Stanford University

Who: Dr. Yaron Brook, president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute, and Dr. Jennifer Morse, senior fellow in economics at the Acton Institute

What: A debate that will focus around the issue of whether Christianity is compatible with capitalism. It will consist of opening remarks, a rebuttal, and a Q&A with the audience.

Where: Building 320, Room 105, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA 94305

When: Tuesday, February 2, 2010, at 7:30 p.m.

Admission: FREE. Open to students and the public. No RSVP required. Go here for maps: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/visitorinfo/plan/maps.html

Bios:

Yaron Brook is president and executive director of the Ayn Rand Institute. A former finance professor, he has published in academic as well as popular publications and is frequently interviewed in the media. He has appeared on CNN, Fox Business Network, Fox News Channel, CNBC and PBS, among others. He lectures on Objectivism, business ethics and foreign policy at college campuses and for corporations across America and throughout the world.

Jennifer Roback Morse, senior fellow in economics at the Acton Institute and regular contributor to National Review Online and The National Catholic Register, received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester. Until recently, she was a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. She has been on the faculty of Yale University and George Mason University, and is the author of Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn’t Work.

More information: Please e-mail the host, the Objectivists of Stanford, at dakinsloss@gmail.com.

Please note: The above event is organized, hosted and sponsored by an individual campus club. Although ARI provides financial support, educational materials and speakers for eligible student clubs, campus clubs are organizations independent of ARI.

We hope you will be able to attend.

Social event - February 7: Hanna House in Palo Alto

For our next bi-monthly social activity we will be touring Frank Lloyd Wright's Hanna House in Palo Alto on Sunday February 7th at 11.30am. The cost is $10 per person plus $5 per car to park. There are limited spaces available according to the web site for the 11:30 am and 11:15 am tours, so be sure to buy your ticket soon if you are interested in coming. Tours last for one hour and we will get lunch in Palo Alto afterwards. Note that this is on a Sunday rather than our usual Saturday because of when the tours occur.

tickets can be purchased at:
http://hannahousetours.stanford.edu/index.php?p=tinfo

Hope you can make it. Please RSVP to goldengateobjectivistsgmailcom if you can make it so that we can look out for you and so we have the right numbers for lunch. Also, if you wish to car pool and save money on parking, let us know and we will try to coordinate.